TTW Weapon & Armor Rationalization

[LT Albrecht]

 

[quote=charwo]Actually, the developers might answer up and down it was super patriotism but when the Word of God runs up against Real Life, it's real life that wins. The developers say there'd been no major conflict since World War II, this is bullshit. There was a Vietnam I can guarantee it, as the US clearly learned every lesson that war taught about stateside management.[/quote]

Vietnam wasn't a major war, it was the US army chasing guerillas through a jungle (both literal and bueraucratic). Furthermore Vietnam isn't the only place you can learn information management.

[quote=charwo]I have no doubts this was a conscript army de jure, but they act like professional ones. Even a minor skirmish like the Falklands shows a professional army cuts through a conscript army like butter. Even without major conflicts this would have been seen time and time again with the IDFs engagements, which does exist. [/quote]

Hence there were only draft riots about 2 years before the bombs fell, before that they met their manpower needs through volunteers. Hell, the UK as a nation has been doing that since the mid 1800s. It works well up until you take losses that are too large to replace by normal recruitment, or you just need an order of magnitude more manpower because shit hit the fan (see WWI, WWII).

[quote=charwo]If you reject the ridiculous hand wave that Fallout works on 50s B-movie Science, and I explicitly do, then when reality ensues you have to look for real world analogies and accept that sometimes people screw up when they tell their own story. This is nowhere more clear than Obsidian's work with NCR, as NCR threatens the 'postapocalytic feel' of the game. Fallout is art by happenstance, its makers have always wanted to sell comic books. Still, it can be salvaged.[/quote]

Fallout was never post-apocalyptic except in name. It was always post-post apocalyptic, about what the world that merged from the ashes would look like, not whether it would emerge. the mainquest of Fallout 1 starts as ensuring the survival of one community out of dozens and then shifts to ensuring the America of the future has humans, not super-mutants lead by a despotic blob. Fallout 2 had you fighting to stop the  Enclave making themselves (and only themselves) the future of America by committing genocide.

In fact they've got more post-apocalyptic as the series progressed, with Fallout 3 and New Vegas (especially with survival mode) feeling *much* more post apocalyptic than Fallout 2's political wrangling and mob problems. 

[quote=charwo]This means the transistor was developed at nearly the same moment. Modern computing doesn't happen otherwise. That means no Mr. Handy's.[/quote]

They have transistors, they're just not the solid-state silicon wafers we've come to know. Adding contemporary electronics tech to fallout removes one of the key technological divisions between the tech of fallout and the tech of our world and seeings as they actually managed to build robots and laserguns they're obviously doing something different. They have some form of computation technology, but whatever it is is predicated on really small valve transistors rather than our solid state ones. 

[quote=charwo]Plus if they really, REALLY developed atomic power that well, they had had nuclear cars well before Peak Oil hit them in 2050, exactly when its projected to hit us if we don't get off the oil teat. This means the Fallout timeline is only aesthetically different from ours. The only tech difference is whether the internet is public as we know it, or still a military and research system like it was in the 1980s. [/quote]

Nope. Fallout is not our world, that's 50% of the background right there, with the other 50% being 'there was a nuclear war'. The Fallout timeline is more than aesthetically different from our own or it'd just be set in real life. 

[quote=charwo]It also means that both China and the USSR liberalized economically long ago to remain competitive with their western counterparts, as they did here. Cheng is a neo-Moaist, an Enclave analog for China, only much, much worse.[/quote]

The USSR, yes. Considering the fact that they seem to have been selling assault rifles to the US military. China I'd guess so, but that's only a presumption based on our reality and how things turned out.             

[quote=charwo]That's an important thing to understand with me: Realism is the mark of art, realism is what I crave, and if it cannot be extrapolated from realism, I want no part of it. The fact is a logistics simplification beyond the platoon level would be a universal .308 battle rifle bulpupped to hell and using caseless ammo to reduce space and thus shipping. That as the widespread adoption of the AA-12 or its (probably faux)wooden counterpart, the Riot Shotgun. Energy weapons need not apply, especially with horrifically high development costs seen in the real world.[/quote]

By their performance in-game, yes they're useless trash that probably account for trillions of wasted tax dollars. That -however- is the fault of the newer fallouts to fail to truly impress the power of energy weapons on the user, instead opting to use them as an aesthetically different guns skill rather than something genuinely different. They're *supposed to be* head and shoulders above the guns they're replacing. Like I said before they're General Van Fleet's Korean war strategy applied to every single engagement, offering immense firepower as a substitute for inadequate numbers.

[quote]There has to be something more than quartemaster's delight. There needs to be a move to small unit tactics, and what would cause that is the miniaturization of weapon systems that were normally crew served. Think the Missile Units and Snipers working independently. This is not gameplay story segregation, it has Land Warrior 2077 written all over it. Reasonable expectations are lighter ordinance, better inbuilt communications, HUDs and inbuilt land warrior pack and feet exoskeleton works.[/quote]

It's gameplay and story segregation. There is no way they'd put crew-served weapons in the engine when bethesda don't even seem to know how iron sights work, and even if they did they'd write it off as an acceptable compromise to put more weapons into the 'big guns' skill. Hell, CoD has idiots running around with M60s like they're carbines and that's something the average gamer takes as 'realistic'. 

[quote=charwo]Biggest issue of the decline of infantry as the main fighting piece of the battlefield were small ordinance, small ammo capacity, need for provisions and sleep.  Land warrior system can lock a soldier upright and administer sleep meds or anti sleep meds (both exist now), and with lighter, smaller ordinance and lighter, more protective armor the biggest issue for infantry need for provisions. Even form scouts and snipers the balance has been equipment, ammo and provisions. ammo is still very heavy and bulky. Even light weight energy cells, (no promise they'll be lightweight) would still be bulky and thus reduce escape for equipment and provisions. If you take the Army still using MREs, and there being a logical limit how much equipment is atually being carried around, it means the best approach is to eliminate ordinance all together.[/quote]

Sure, you know another way to eliminate ordinance? Give everyone a knife and no M16. However, the compromise there is you end up as legion recruits and get gunned down by the guy who brought the M16. Similarly, if you bring a weapon that's too much worse than your opponent it doesn't matter if you could be fighting for a week after he'd have run out of ammo, he killed you in the first hour.

The drug administration, powered legs, targeting assist for single-man heavy weapons and all those other things are built into the T51-B. Power armour *is* their Land warrior 2077. It recycles waste into drinking water to reduce strain on the supply chain, it lets you carry large weaponry (and a decent amount of ammunition to feed it with) its legs lock into an upright position to relieve effort when standing watch etc (at least on the APA mkI) and all the rest.

[quote]This is where personal energy weapons could be justified in terms of development costs: with a hyperbreeder where the logistic constraint of ammo is taken out, at least for tactical engagements, which are measured in days, you have a phenomenal weight and bulk saving. Look at the notes of the Recharger rifle:

• 
  Despite its low damage the gun can be fired very rapidly outside of V.A.T.S.


• 
  Each unit of ammunition only takes 1 second to recharge, meaning a fully discharged rifle takes 7 seconds to recharge.


• 
  While much heavier and noticeably weaker per shot than the laser rifle, it doesn't require any ammunition to be carried. Because of this, it can be one option for consideration in hardcore mode.

And Hardcore doesn't take into account space as a factor either. A modern M-16 is eight pounds unloaded, a recharger rifle is 15 pounds. A Marine in Iraq will carry 180 rounds in 6 30 round clips at a minimum. Many times they will carry as much ammo as then can carry. If you have a recharger rifle and pistol, you have replenishing, recoilless ammo and weapons for a grand total of 22 pounds. [/quote]

Yep, and it needs another recharger rifle to use as spare parts every 5 minutes, so double that to 30lb of rifle and all of a sudden the 8lb service rifle and 7lbs of ammo doesn't look so bad, if we're talking in-game here (if we are, next segment is also relevant).

[quote]Look, I played a moddified game where all I did was extended the recharger rifle's clip to 20 instead of 7. My character with not a point in energy weapons but from stats was sharpshooting deathclaws to death at level five. On hard. That sold me on the concept.[/quote]

And I once used a hunting shotgun full of slugs as a sniper rifle. It works ingame due to the mehanics of the game, nothing more. The fact that everything in the game has criminally low DT and the recharger rifle's damage is awful should illustrate how well that'd work if the game were balanced right. For reference, in my game the rechargers are useless, any decent arour will protect you from their firepower and 

Also, to use an ingame example coupled with real-life data, the weapons in mass effect 1 were all only limited by heat dissipation, however they were replaced in Me2 (for reasons of the devs being stupid) justified by the true fact that the side that puts down the most firepower early in the engagement is the one that usually wins, and that something like the ME1 weapons cooling system makes you slow down how much fire you put down for reasons other than whether or not putting down the fire would be effective. 

I agree with you on the fact things need to be rationalised, there are definitely quite a lot of inconsistencies and just plain contradictions that would be better off fixed. However, I'm not so keen on some of the proposed solutions, especially making such sweeping changes to how the energy weapons work. 

[charwo]

I actually like where this is going, although I'm gonna say straight out the system of weapons disintegration is absurdly awful. If being broke represents when a weapon is so fouled it has to be strip cleaned, then a fully repaired gun should be able to fire a lot more rounds, maybe by orders of magnitude. The repair system sucks too, but that's beyond my ability to fix with my level of skill. However, with a couple of weapon repair kits in game, even a hyperbreeder is good for days out in the field.

But, let's look at some of the issues with lasers. Leave Plasma out for the moment. I played Fallout 1 and 2 and I was unimpressed with the lasers. They are easy to bounce off if you come prepared. If its a straight laser. But look at the LaWS system http://theweek.com/article/index/242454/watch-the-us-navy-shoots-down-a-drone-with-a-laser-cannon

Imagine taking that down to personal weapon size. That's a Tesla Cannon. And you'd need a LOT of power to get off a charge like that. Foretunetly Fallout does power best. Don't think of the microbreeder as free ammo. Think of it as a compromise. The wear is proportional to the charge, a charge that must be refueled outside of the combat sight. But doing it right would require a system of charges per energy unit, as in a plasma pistol would get like 10 shots a SEC and a laser pistol would get 15. I think it worked like that in Fallout 1 &2. But it don't work like that and since I don't know anything about scripting I can't make it work like that. What I do know that using lasers made a lot more sense in FO3 and NV. I could spam attack people and overwhelm their defensives. 

The thing to remember is that energy weapons by total ARE inefficient compared to kinetic weapons. On personal weapons they should be less powerful by a small margin than their small arms counterparts. But they make up for it in firepower and weight savings.

But let's get away from what Fallout says about how energy weapons works compared to small arms, though recognize you and I saw two very different things in terms of performance. Look at that video and tell me what it tells you about taking an energy weapon down to a pistol.

[LT Albrecht]

[quote=charwo]I actually like where this is going, although I'm gonna say straight out the system of weapons disintegration is absurdly awful. If being broke represents when a weapon is so fouled it has to be strip cleaned, then a fully repaired gun should be able to fire a lot more rounds, maybe by orders of magnitude. The repair system sucks too, but that's beyond my ability to fix with my level of skill. However, with a couple of weapon repair kits in game, even a hyperbreeder is good for days out in the field.[/quote]

Yeah, repair kits do change the situation there, as do the game mechanics of your gun falling apart as you shoot it.

[quote=charwo]But, let's look at some of the issues with lasers. Leave Plasma out for the moment. I played Fallout 1 and 2 and I was unimpressed with the lasers. They are easy to bounce off if you come prepared. If its a straight laser. But look at the LaWS system http://theweek.com/article/index/242454/watch-the-us-navy-shoots-down-a-...[/quote]

It's a laser calibrated for a sustained rate of moderately low energy pulses with a pretty continuous energy output. reasonably impressive for our tech but completely the opposite way to the fallout universe's approach to laser weaponry which seems to value much shorter durations of much higher energy pulses.

[quote=charwo]Imagine taking that down to personal weapon size. That's a Tesla Cannon. And you'd need a LOT of power to get off a charge like that. Foretunetly Fallout does power best. Don't think of the microbreeder as free ammo. Think of it as a compromise. The wear is proportional to the charge, a charge that must be refueled outside of the combat sight. But doing it right would require a system of charges per energy unit, as in a plasma pistol would get like 10 shots a SEC and a laser pistol would get 15. I think it worked like that in Fallout 1 &2. But it don't work like that and since I don't know anything about scripting I can't make it work like that. What I do know that using lasers made a lot more sense in FO3 and NV. I could spam attack people and overwhelm their defensives.[/quote]

It's kinda been partially done in-game. Taking one SEC as say 30 charge units (30 ammo) and making a laser pistol use 2 ammo/shot and a plasma pistol use 3, with both of them having a magazine size of one SEC (30 ammo) would mean a laser pistol would get you 15 shots from one Cell and a Plasma pistol would get you 10. The thing standing in the way of this in-game is that they didn't standardise the magazine sizes, all it'd really take is to standardise the magazine sizes over all energy weapons, setting a Small Energy cell as 30 ammo and thus anything that takes N SECs has 30N magazine size. Same for MF Cells and EC Packs.

[quote]The thing to remember is that energy weapons by total ARE inefficient compared to kinetic weapons. On personal weapons they should be less powerful by a small margin than their small arms counterparts. But they make up for it in firepower and weight savings.[/quote]

They're less powerful/unit mass, yeah. A laser pistol weighs way more than most projectile sidearms, but does offer more firepower (for instance). They're muskets to the longbow, one is a precise and refined form of a weapon centuries old, the apotheosis of its technology. The other is new, crude and inelegant but powerful.

[quote=charwo]But let's get away from what Fallout says about how energy weapons works compared to small arms, though recognize you and I saw two very different things in terms of performance. Look at that video and tell me what it tells you about taking an energy weapon down to a pistol.[/quote]

The lasers in FO1 and 2 were odd, very powerful but incredibly susceptible to armour protection. They have a similar problem to Plasma weapons in FO3/NV, they're great except for one characteristic (armour resistances for lasers, projectiles for plasma) that makes them useless when they really shouldn't be. Now *that* is something that needs fixing. Why those projectiles are so slow I have no idea, they managed to project a magnetic 'pinch' powerful enough to keep all those high-energy ions bundled so I haven't a clue why it's so damn slow. the projectiles should be more blinding white (or other colour, atomic spectra and temperature depending) though, and the result should leave more stuff on fire.

[charwo]

I'd think the simple answer, though not 'lore friendly' is to do away with Plasma entirely except as a as a kind of high powered flamethrower, as in EVE's Plasma Caster for Fallout 3. Now I never play Fallout 3 unmodded, but in FWE the lasers are instantaneous or as close as it gets to it, with no recoil. That means I've sniped people from nearly a mile away with a laser pistol, instant hit, instant kill. The tracer effect and learning to compensate for breathe a movements in New Vegas, like a real shooter has to allowed by character in Vegas to snipe and law down tons of fire on deathclaws until there was a critical. It clearly is a tradeoff, nuless you get the hyperbreeder and that's game breaking.....I don't know how to fix it short of taking it out.

Basically, I think the critical rate makes the lasers far from useless, again in FWE in FO3 and Project Nevada in New Vegas. It takes longer, but the more accurrate and disciplined your fire, the quicker they die. I think the great thing about lasers is that they are a different play style in game and out. They are a melding between accuracy and firepower rather than the firearms general disposition of either or. That's because a firearm in the middle is the worst of both worlds and a laser in the middle is the best of both worlds. Unless there is real world logic against it, and I think even in Fallout, its the accuracy of the laser that kills, not the brute power, I think the balance is correct.

But clearly the semiautomatic fire and zero to nil recoil make the Recharger rifle a powerhouse when it shouldn't. In the right, well trained hands. Which I was even if my character wasn't.

As to the plasma, is there a way to justify it being a glob sticking together and going down 200 yards with a functional range of an assault rifle, or do we need to get ride of it? I LOATHE the 'Urban Plasma Rifle' and the plasma designs of Obsidian, but I think the Plasma Caster/ Original Plasma Rifle is something that should be saved if reasonable.

[LT Albrecht]

[quote=charwo]

I'd think the simple answer, though not 'lore friendly' is to do away with Plasma entirely except as a as a kind of high powered flamethrower, as in EVE's Plasma Caster for Fallout 3. Now I never play Fallout 3 unmodded, but in FWE the lasers are instantaneous or as close as it gets to it, with no recoil. That means I've sniped people from nearly a mile away with a laser pistol, instant hit, instant kill. The tracer effect and learning to compensate for breathe a movements in New Vegas, like a real shooter has to allowed by character in Vegas to snipe and law down tons of fire on deathclaws until there was a critical. It clearly is a tradeoff, nuless you get the hyperbreeder and that's game breaking.....I don't know how to fix it short of taking it out.

Basically, I think the critical rate makes the lasers far from useless, again in FWE in FO3 and Project Nevada in New Vegas. It takes longer, but the more accurrate and disciplined your fire, the quicker they die. I think the great thing about lasers is that they are a different play style in game and out. They are a melding between accuracy and firepower rather than the firearms general disposition of either or. That's because a firearm in the middle is the worst of both worlds and a laser in the middle is the best of both worlds. Unless there is real world logic against it, and I think even in Fallout, its the accuracy of the laser that kills, not the brute power, I think the balance is correct.

But clearly the semiautomatic fire and zero to nil recoil make the Recharger rifle a powerhouse when it shouldn't. In the right, well trained hands. Which I was even if my character wasn't.

As to the plasma, is there a way to justify it being a glob sticking together and going down 200 yards with a functional range of an assault rifle, or do we need to get ride of it? I LOATHE the 'Urban Plasma Rifle' and the plasma designs of Obsidian, but I think the Plasma Caster/ Original Plasma Rifle is something that should be saved if reasonable.

[/quote]

The easy way would be to throw an incredibly magnetically charged piece of materiel out to create something to hold the plasma together, or find a way to otherwise induce a magnetic field to hold the soup of atom constituents together? Yeah, plasma projection would be possible. Oh, and the 'Plasma Defender' is a Glock 86 from the first two games, I'm guessing your beef is with the bethsquash designs.

I've never tried that playstyle with the laser weapons, I guess that makes sense what with their lack of recoil and instant projectile travel. The recharger rifle's problem is that none of the armour in the game has decent enough DT (as previously mentioned), put the recharger rifle up against anything genuinely tough and it'll look a lot less powerful, sure it's accurate and its ammo lasts theoretically forever, but if it can't hurt targets then it's pretty worthless.

 

[charwo]

Well, if you're looking to make a hit, any hit, no it won't. You have to line a target aim for vitals, and aim. One thing I will say in playing World of Pain in New Vegas if you are going up against power armor types and sentry robots you can have issues, if you don't think tactically. I prefer disabling robots, but I've done it. With tech raiders wearing T-45d, it's difficult, but nowhere near impossible. with a 20 round clip and distance, preferably with sneaking and surprise, but even without, you can batter through a helmet pretty quick. It's the more dakka approach you take when bringing a SMG to bear against an armored opponent. Lacking recoil and the built in ability to fire nearly as fast as you can pull the trigger/click the mouse, you can punch throw the helmet and ash power armor troops before they recover from the first blow.

That said, it does take substantial player skill with the gun, whereas I love VATS. But getting the crazy Deathclaw killer accomplishment meant a lot of save and reloads, but I learned the craft well.

[LT Albrecht]

Sneak attack crits in this game are horribly overpowered, ranged ones get an extra 2x multiplier on top of the normal crit bonuses. This is compounded by the terrible sneak detection algorithm in the base game that allows you to get them so easily, they pretty much allow you to hurt anyone with anything if you shoot from far enough away. IF we're talking reality, if a .22LR round doesn't have the energy to punch through a target at point blank it's not going to have it from 150 Meters. Sure, it might be justifiable to have a small damage increase for sneak attacks to simulate catching your opponent unawares but the current 2x bonus on top of everything else really skews things.

T45D in the base game has what, 27 DT? The recharger rifle has 12 DAM. It should not be able to do damage against something with more than 2x its damage in DT, unless some small amount on a lucky critical. Regardless, 27 is too low when a civillian .308 rifle does 52 damage.

[charwo]

One shot ONE SHOT has a threshold of 12 DT. But it is more than possible to chew through someone's armor, esepcially when that shot is melting away chunks as it does it. And lasers have and easier time chewing through armor. It's not even sneaking. Sneaking's too easy when you have More Wasteland Encounters and fighting is every frickin day. Plus I'm lazy. With the adrenaline rush feature of Project Nevada, but even without it (and it is justified based on what I've read about the human body in combat), this was standing up. And many times you need to stand up so as to see the target clearly instead of Grass or cacti or some such.

No. 20 round clip on a recharger rifle, standing up, non-VATS shooting. Dead in 2-3 seconds. That was with perks (I ran through Honest Hearts first for storytelling purposes), but it can be done. Same thing as most sharpshooters, accurate concentrated firepower over a long distance wins the day. This character tends to be weak in close quarters, but trained and equipped like a boss, she destroys all in her wake. But this requires trigger discipline on the part of the player.

[TJ]

[quote=LT Albrecht]

Sneak attack crits in this game are horribly overpowered, ranged ones get an extra 2x multiplier on top of the normal crit bonuses.

[/quote]

Sneak bonus multiplier on my game: Nothing. Base damage and no more.

Edit: Try it.

[charwo]

That's a bad idea. If it gets changed, just have it that sneak critical is a 100% chance of a critical with no damage modifications in and of itself.